Traffic planning and forecasting is required for determining how traffic flow will impact a transport infrastructure. The transport infrastructure includes roads and public transport. Transport infrastructure continually needs updating and it is important to identify where traffic is most densely concentrated. Traffic concentration can change over time due to events taking place or due to environmental and social changes. For example, more people may be choosing to live in or in close proximity to a city or a town, etc. Thus more transport facilities may be required in particular areas.
In order to carry out traffic planning and forecasting, planners need to gather data. Typical methods for gathering data include answers to census questionnaires, answers to household questionnaires, road/public transport surveys, GPS trackers placed in vehicles or looking at an average traffic flow of a road network model, etc. Each of these methods is expensive, lacks accuracy and may sample only a small proportion of a country's population.
Mobile phone operators may collect information about call events, including telephone calls, Short Message Service (SMS) and mobile data retrieval etc. This information is a vast resource of unstructured information that is collected by mobile phone operators for billing purposes etc. There have been a number of studies into the use of this data for determining the flow of traffic through commuter routes, for determining location based services and targeted advertising.
However, misleading results are given for those users of mobile phones who do not use their mobile phone on a regular basis.